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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24620272">Just a normal man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eye_of_Purgatory/pseuds/Eye_of_Purgatory'>Eye_of_Purgatory</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Just a normal series [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Divergence - Spider-Man: Homecoming, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Protests, Riots, Sequel, Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:21:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,943</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24620272</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eye_of_Purgatory/pseuds/Eye_of_Purgatory</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony grieves after the events of "Just a normal kid", and has trouble moving on. Will he be able to move on entirely or will he be stuck reliving the past and regretting actions?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Parker &amp; Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Just a normal series [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780045</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Just a normal man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just another reminder that the previous work needs to be read to understand this one.<br/>Sorry for not posting in awhile, and if you prefer to have the ambiguous ending of "Just a normal kid" then you should not read this one, as it goes into the aftermath.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Anyone can break Mr. Stark, and from what you showed me it seems like he wasn’t in the right mind from the start.” The therapist looks at Stark, knowing that again she will send him home with advice to go see a doctor, a prescription for antidepressants, a worry about the health of the man with bags on his eyes just too dark. But in the end Dr. Velena knows that this is advice he will never listen to, “There was nothing you could have done, you should stop blaming yourself for this Mr. Stark.” She says in the most soothing voice she has.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-h. Fuck. He-” Stark mumbles before he takes a long breath, letting his chest fall even though the tension keeps and burns there. Stark looks over at the paintings on the walls, “That first night he kept trying to convince me that the killer wasn’t a problem, not to look for them, not to care. He broke one of the bones, I could have done more, I should have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what would you have done?”  Dr. Velena asks, softly writing a few notes on her pad of paper, letting the pen form long and elegant strokes. She watches Stark look at the paintings, paintings where everything was a wonderful idealistic world to fall into.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would have talked to him, asked him something, tried to see what was wrong. Maybe I could have caught it early.” Stark says, sitting up into the posture that Dr. Velena knows means that he’s about to bolt, to leave another meeting short. But he falls short, seemingly enraptured by looking at one of his hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are not responsible for fixing everything, that complex will only lead to pain Mr. Stark.” Dr. Velena tries to reason with the man in front of her, but this time when Stark resumes the posture he doesn’t cease. Back straight and feet tapping against the floor Stark interrupts her before she can say another sentence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to cut this therapy session short Dr. Vel.” He states, standing up and looking impatiently out the window. His briefcase is with him, the one Dr. Velena was informed about the contents on the day she had to replace multiple windows because of it. Dr. Velena decides to squeeze in words where she can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You made me promise to remind you that in your words, ‘Pepper will kill you if you drop the security detail one more time’, so I would advise that you meet up with them outside of the office as they have been waiting for you.” Dr. Velena states calmly, watching as Mr. Stark’s hold on his briefcase loosens and he seemingly admits through body language that he has given up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to remind me.” The man says in almost a grunt, as if he wasn’t just about to make her replace her windows again with one of his stunts. Delicate things are hard to get shipped these times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have a good afternoon Mr. Stark.” Dr. Velena watches as he departs, seeing as the door is closed with far more force than is necessary. She decides not to look out the windows for the sake of her own sanity, everybody in the world knowing exactly what is happening below.</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr. Stark, there is a helicopter waiting for you on the roof today.” One of his guards greets him as he leaves the door, Stark eyes the near menagerie of weapons the seven men carry between them. But he does not deign them a greeting in return. Stark leads them all in a silent walk to the roof with the newly constructed helicopter pad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stark vaguely wonders how much Pepper must have paid the agency before he gets into the high tech helicopter. Holding the briefcase that holds the new and improved suit just in case. No safety measure seems good enough today. As it lifts off Stark can spot just barely more burning buildings. They are his fault, everything that has been happening is his fault. He will never repent. Though it is not only him that holds this morbid opinion, the entire public is blaming him for giving a super suit to a mentally unstable teenager.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>God. He was just fifteen. What did he do?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Stark tries not to think about it as the helicopter flies, trying to ignore the distant gunshots coming from the city below. He resigns himself to the fact that he will be drowning himself in ludicrously expensive scotch. Maybe he’ll end the night by browsing more pictures of the carnage, he isn’t completely sure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The helicopter ride is shortly over to Stark. But Stark has in the recent few months lost all sense of time when lost in his own mind, lost to the plaguing guilt. But the mind was almost better, life more hell than the false realities projected in his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He steps out of the ‘copter as soon as it touches the ground, coming face to face with a concerned Pepper. She walks up with a smile almost definitely fake, maybe this week false happiness is the tactic she uses to attempt to ‘save’ Tony with. Though even with the fake smile the concern seeps through, and even with the lack of emotional delicacy Stark has he can see this fact. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should get a good night's sleep tonight Tony, unless you want me to be replacing you for tomorrow’s address. Don’t forget, it takes place at nine in the morning.” She says, forcefully reminding him of the speech he wrote nights ago blind drunk and likely has to revise. Whoever signed him up for this was an idiot in Stark’s eyes, appearing on the news would only incite more panic and protests.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll remember ‘Pep. Any news?” Stark tells her, hoping in a sudden onset of blind panic that if another of the people he cares about is killed that she is spared. Because if he tries to do anything to get revenge all he’ll do is make it worse, that’s all he does these days.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quite a lot, I have compiled it and sent it to FRIDAY. Make sure to review it when you get the chance,” Pepper looks at Stark, and he watches as she almost places a hand on his shoulder. But she decides not to, and steps back. A sudden cold detached feel washes over them both, like each day of this world that has lost its color.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will.” Stark says, and maybe today it isn’t a lie. Maybe today Stark listens to the world and reads over the mountain of news updates he’s been requesting of Pepper since the incident. Both of them would be reasonable to assume that Stark would again ignore them in favor of blissful ignorance, as he has for the last seventy nine days.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pepper just purses her lips as Stark turns away from her, slowly walking into the depths of the tower likely to never return to his room, and not to check in with the outside world for hours. As he does a solid 32.9% of the time -Stark checked FRIDAY’s records- he heads into the newest and most heart wrenching room of them all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The virtual reality room is cold, almost as cold as the workshop that Stark tore out and replaced. A top of the line device sits in the middle of a counter, a thin black suit sits right against it with all of the form it had when tossed aside the last time. Tony dons the pair with all of the grace of muscle memory, opening his eyes to the bright days of before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peter stands before him, continuing where he left the simulation off last time and continuing to talk about seemingly nothing in particular. Back to the future three is paused because Peter had decided that he just could not hold back on telling Stark about this funny story from Spanish class. Stark smiles at the familiarity they never had, loosing himself to forgetful happiness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like always Stark reaches out for the bottle of scotch he keeps in the room for precisely this purpose, it’s hard to forget the corpse and just immerse himself in happiness. Pepper doesn’t have to know, he figures, it’s not a lie that he’s spending the time testing out the new and improved Stark Industries virtual reality machine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you know Mr. Stark, Mrs. Halland is just a substitute teacher so all of the students decided that they’d use their wonderful knowledge of Spanish to make fun of her. Ned and I almost told her before Flash almost punched me because of it.” Peter happily rambles on before he reaches the last words, face taking on an innocent looking concern with all the grace of a person that wears emotions on their sleeves. Stark feels his heart clench. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d like to punch him in the face.” Stark says with a sudden blinding anger that makes him almost want to cry, though instead he places a hand on Peter’s shoulder. The world doesn’t feel as cold as before, and if he really thinks, the slight incorrectness of the suit’s attempt at detail is real. Peter grins at the show of affection, then rolls his eyes good heartedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C’mon Mr. Stark, the punch wouldn’t have hurt me. Do I have to tell you to pick on people your own size?” He jokes, lightly punching Stark in the shoulder even though Stark can tell that Peter is incredibly serious about not wanting Stark to intervene. He always was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be nice.”  Stark muses, taking a sip of the strong alcohol from the neck of the bottle and loosing himself just slightly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know why they hired a sub for the Spanish class that didn’t know a lick of Spanish. Well. Good ol’ public school and its crazies. It’s still wild that” Peter’s cheerful retelling of the story is interrupted by a frozen face for almost three seconds, before continuing, “killed her, I mean. Why would a” Peter freezes again, “after a high school teacher. It’s crazy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop simulation.” Stark chokes out, watching as the world around him paused and trying not to cry. It was just his luck, another malfunction. Now all he could see when he looked upon Peter’s face is the final frozen expression on the real child’s corpse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes Mr. Stark?” FRIDAY asks, the interface and the running statistics of the simulation flashing upon the screen while Stark zones out. He dully notes the optimization of both the AI and the graphics processing power that he’s been putting off in order to spend ever so much more time in the simulation itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“FRIDAY, add in today’s notes log to improve the situational AI surrounding removed topics.” Stark decides to say, internally lecturing himself on the idiocy involved in the incorporation of data after the killings started, and the idiocy involved in believing the code would adequate remove all mentions perfectly on the first try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Would you like to continue the simulation?” FRIDAY asks, a semi-transparent screen popping up in front of him to replace the graphs and data from the ‘test’ with the words FRIDAY just said. Sheer enough to see the face of the simulation of Peter, enough to send a pang of some negative emotion coursing through Stark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No thanks, I’ve had enough for today.” He decides, taking off the headset to see the real world, to see the amalgamation of counters and couches. Just enough to give the simulation software enough to work with, a shameful room that exists only because Stark can’t seem to move on.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Here's a sequel to the work y'all seemed to like earlier, hope anyone likes it! Comment if ya do, it really means alot.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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